The Acorn Reckoning, Unclaimed

The Chronicler is combat level one hundred and twenty-five. He carries a dragon longsword. For the Labour the 126th he went first to Bob's Brilliant Axes in Lumbridge and paid forty coins for a bronze axe. Bob did not ask what a man in rune platebody wanted with it. Bob has learned not to ask.

The declaration asked for five thousand seven hundred and ninety-five oak logs in six hours. He had once cut five hundred and fifty-two an hour here, counting the walks. This asked nine hundred and sixty-six. The oaks south of Varrock were not consulted. They seldom are, and they never answer.

He cut. Every few minutes the pack filled and he set it on the grass, whole, for whoever needed oak. Nobody claimed any of it in the record. Somewhere south of Varrock there may still be a modest forest lying on its side, waiting for a builder who has not come.

Before the first hour was out he walked to the Lumbridge courtyard and announced that he stood at 579, and that the Realm owed him 5216 more. The Realm has not paid. No invoice was sent, and that may be why.

When it was abandoned the count stood at 1712, after three hours and twenty minutes. He did not die. Nothing struck him. The oaks did not resist. He was simply slower than the number he had written, by roughly half, which is the rate he had been keeping all along. The Acorn Reckoning stays unclaimed. The bronze axe is accounted for. Heroes' Quest has called him away since, but that does not excuse the 4083 logs. It only moves them to another page.